Brian
Martin

Dedicated to Johan Niezing, social
defence researcher

I thank Robert Burrowes and Mary
Cawte for many helpful comments on an earlier draft of this
paper.

Abstract

Four problems that could arise
from the introduction of social defence are outlined: surveillance
society, nonviolent neocolonialism, nonviolent oppression and social
defence evangelism. A society without organised violence could still
be exploitative.

Assume that at some time in the future, military forces throughout
the world have been abolished and replaced by social defence systems
-- that is, systems designed to resist aggression or repression by
the use of nonviolent action by the general population. There would
be widespread education and training in strikes, boycotts and other
forms of noncooperation, detailed plans for dealing with possible
threats, and massive investment in appropriate infrastructure for
nonviolent struggle, including systems for communications,
production, transport, energy, food and health. The scale of
training, preparation and investment might well be as great as what
goes on today for military struggle.

With such systems in place, the prospects of warfare in the present
sense -- armed struggle involving armies -- would be negligible.
Violent warfare would be eliminated for all practical purposes.
Instead, there would be, no doubt, a great deal of nonviolent
struggle, some of it quite heated.

But would the abolition of military systems lead to an ideal world?
It might seem that with the end of organised violence, remaining
problems would be trivial by comparison. But this is not necessarily
so. Many serious forms of exploitation can be maintained without the
use of physical violence.

Here I outline some possible problems that may arise in a world
converted to social defence. Four types of "pathologies" are
examined, relating to surveillance, neocolonialism, oppression and
professional dominance.

For some people these possibilities must seem ridiculous, and indeed
they would consider "oppression without violence" to be a
contradiction in terms. That is because they use a broad definition
of the term "nonviolence," conceiving it to be a challenge to
oppression. The resolution of this apparent paradox is that I use the
term "nonviolent" here in the narrow sense of not involving physical
coercion against humans. So what is involved here is oppression,
exploitation and inequality which are protected or enforced without
physical violence. That means no military forces and no armed
police forces.

An assumption underlying this analysis is that oppression may be
organised under a variety of social systems, of which present systems
are only one possibility. Today, military forces and associated
social structures, such as the state and patriarchy, are responsible
for much exploitation, death and suffering. But it is also possible
to imagine exploitation, death and suffering even after military
forces are abolished.

Just as the elimination of slavery or Nazism (for the time being) did
not mean the end of oppression, neither will the elimination of
militaries. In each case, the abolition of a system of oppression may
be considered an advance, but it should not be imagined that this
will be the end of the necessity for social struggle to achieve a
better society.

Before turning to the four types of pathologies in future social
defence systems, it is worthwhile commenting on the process of
attaining these hypothetical future systems. There are a number of
possible paths to social defence. Some advocates believe that
governments will switch to social defence once they are convinced of
its efficacy.[1]
Others argue that action by a range of community organisations,
including peace groups, unions and churches, will be necessary to
promote social defence in the face of opposition by ruling
elites.[2]
It is also possible to imagine that social defence will be adopted as
part of a process of democratisation of society, in which nonviolent
action plays a key role in the reshaping of social institutions.

For my purposes, the precise manner by which social defence is
introduced is not crucial. I will assume, though, that the
introduction of social defence involves and generates considerable
action at the grassroots, even in those circumstances where
governments play a leading role in promoting it. Since social defence
demands widespread participation, it is only reasonable to expect
that it is not entirely a matter for policy-making at the top.

It should be unnecessary to say that this discussion is not meant to
be an attack on social defence. Quite the contrary. It is precisely
because I believe social defence to be a crucially important method
and goal that I think it is worthwhile examining possible future
problems.

Possible Pathology 1: A
Surveillance Society

In a world without military
forces, there would be a high priority placed on preventing the
production of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction. The
methods to do this would, of course, be nonviolent. Preventive
measures might include refusal to produce or distribute materials
that could be used for weapons and the inculcation of an ethic
hostile to weapons. Certain types of research, with potential weapons
spin-offs, might be branded unethical, in the same way that some
experimentation on humans is treated today.

Such preventive measures might work in many cases, but what about
"renegades" who persisted in efforts to produce or stockpile weapons,
perhaps in secret? One solution would be investigative operations,
detecting illicit flows of relevant materials or suspicious
activities in laboratories or factories.

What about actual weapons produced? In some cases, efforts at
persuasion might work to convince possessors of weapons to allow them
to be dismantled. In other cases, boycotts of crucial materials might
be sufficient to stop the activity. But when society contains
significant weapons, with the potential to kill many people, there
would be an argument for "direct disarmament": people's action to
dismantle or destroy the weapons. This would constitute violence
against property (non-sentient objects) but might be considered
acceptable by exponents of some conceptions of nonviolent action.

The transition to social defence must involve some dismantling or
destruction of weapons. Some scenarios for this transition portray
disarmament as a fully planned operation initiated willingly by
governments or other authorities; other scenarios include direct
disarmament as a people's initiative in the face of resistance by
some governments and militaries. In either case, there would be
people with skills in "decommissioning" weapons systems.

Presently, the knowledge of how to produce nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons, as well as many deadly conventional weapons, is
widely dispersed. As long as this sort of knowledge is widely
available, a social defence system would need to have a well
developed process of inspection to prevent or detect illicit weapons
production. Laboratories and factories would be prime targets for
inspection, but the scrutiny might go further than this, depending on
experience with renegade weapons producers.

The negative side of this process of "inspection" is a potential
threat to privacy. To put it another way, completely stopping weapons
production might require a formidable surveillance operation.
Conceivably, it could involve visits to personal dwellings,
monitoring of meetings and communications, and 24-hour watches over
particular individuals. In short, there might be a powerful apparatus
of surveillance, justified in the name of preventing the production
of armaments.

In small, face-to-face communities (such as tribes, extended families
and small villages), few actions of individuals can remain unobserved
by others. The sort of scrutiny found in such communities is often a
powerful force for conformity. With the rise of cities and the
increase in travel, the possibilities for escaping such community
scrutiny have increased. Anonymity has become a possibility, often at
the cost of isolation and anomie. But the rise of the mass society
has also seen an increase in mass surveillance, greatly facilitated
in recent years by computers. Most people in industrialised societies
today are monitored when they drive cars, use banks and register with
schools and government services. (This is not to mention what is more
typically thought of as surveillance, namely monitoring of criminals
by police and "subversives" by spy agencies.) Countries such as
Germany and the United States have been dubbed "surveillance
societies."[3]

Surveillance, then, is nothing new. Indeed, it might be argued that
surveillance of some sort is necessary for a stable society. The
questions are, what sort of surveillance, who carries it out, who
benefits and who makes decisions about it?

In a society with social defence, some sort of surveillance is likely
to be necessary to prevent production and use of weapons. The exact
nature of the surveillance would depend on the structure of the
society. In face-to-face communities, direct observation and peer
pressure would provide the primary obstacle to weapons manufacture,
but perhaps accompanied by the familiar oppressiveness of such
communities. On the other hand, a mass society might require more
anonymous forms of surveillance. In either case, there seems to be a
trade-off: the creation of a society without weapons capable of mass
killing seems to imply a sacrifice of some of the privacy or
anonymity that is valued by many people today. What is the
appropriate balance between these two priorities? Or, alternatively,
is there some resolution to the apparent dilemma?

Possible Pathology 2:
Neocolonialism without Physical Violence

Military systems today play a key
role in the generation and maintenance of economic inequality. This
applies within countries, where military force provides the ultimate
protection for private property (in capitalist systems) and/or
bureaucratic privilege (in socialist systems). It also applies
between countries: military regimes throughout the third world act to
protect first world investments and to perpetuate dependency
relationships.

Suppose that all these military systems are abolished and replaced by
social defence systems. Does economic inequality disappear too?

First consider "noninterventionist social defence." Each country or
region would develop nonviolent methods to defend itself, without
much consideration of what is going on in other parts of the world.
(This model leaves unexplained why social defence would spread
throughout the world, but that issue can be set aside for the time
being.) In other words, social defence would be seen primarily as a
defence of the societies that adopt it. There would not be much
concern about what goes on in other societies.

With such a noninterventionist world system, present-day exploitation
of third world peoples would be replaced by a sort of "benign
neglect." Poor communities would not be overtly repressed, but
neither would they be given a great deal of outside help. The result
could well be economic inequality that persists because there is no
action taken to redress it.

An alternative scenario involves "interventionist social defence." In
this model, an integral part of the capacity of any community to
defend itself would be the capacity to intervene (nonviolently) in
other communities, for example to prevent the development of hostile
groups. This nonviolent intervention could involve direct
communications (for example using radio or the post), nonviolent
intervenors (like Peace Brigades International today), boycotts, and
campaigns through cross-community organisations and forums (such as
transnational corporations and nongovernment organisations
today).

One scenario for introducing social defence is through the necessity
for a community, having adopted social defence for itself, to
intervene against potentially hostile regimes, especially to
overthrow military systems and thus prevent invasion.[4]
The social defence systems resulting from such a process are quite
likely to be interventionist in nature.

The danger with interventionist social defence is cultural
imperialism: pressure to adapt local practices to the practices of
the intervening group. This could, conceivably, help to maintain
economic inequality. For example, intervenors might promote
nonviolent market systems (if these could be organised) as being
allegedly superior to collectivist economic systems. Another
possibility is the use of nonviolent action to protect economically
privileged communities from refugees, who would be refused entry in
the name of local autonomy, self-reliance and community
solidarity.

My view is that the replacement of military forces by social defence
will provide a great boost for struggles for global economic justice.
But those struggles are not guaranteed to succeed, and it is possible
to imagine economic inequality emerging or persisting in a world
system based on social defence, justified and defended by a different
set of rationales and methods than today. Indeed, the very question
of what economic equality means and whether it is desirable or
attainable is something that will continue to be debated -- hopefully
by nonviolent means.

There is no simple solution to the problem of designing a social
defence system and avoiding the issue of economic exploitation or
inequality. Whether interventionist or not, social defence has
implications for economics. Of course, this is no different from
military defence.

Possible Pathology 3: Oppression
without Physical Violence

Would the end of military violence
signal the end of oppression? Almost certainly not. Oppression is
quite possible in social systems in which there is neither the threat
nor the reality of physical violence. This is apparent by examining
most state or corporate bureaucracies, or voluntary organisations
such as churches and trade unions. In all such organisations, there
can be great differences in power and privilege enforced almost
entirely by tradition and belief systems. Violence can be a valuable
tool of oppressors, but it is not essential.

Possible pathology 2, "neocolonialism without physical violence," is
one important case of a more general possibility that can be called
"oppression without physical violence." (This is closely related to
Johan Galtung's concept of "structural violence.") In the guise of
defending against aggression, various systems of inequality and
exploitation can be maintained. For example:

* A local currency or credit scheme is established in a cooperative
fashion. Everyone appears to agree. But it provides power and
privilege to those whose skills are given high credits. Nonviolent
action is used against those who seek to challenge the scheme.

* Systematic consensus procedures are established for all
decision-making in a community. Those with special skills in the
method of consensus and in arguing their case -- those who might be
called "consensus experts" -- use their skills and networks to oppose
any change in the process.

* Discriminatory policies, cloaked in the guise of "politically
correct" views, are implemented by the concerted efforts of likely
beneficiaries.

* Workers in strategic sectors of the economy, such as computer
specialists, use nonviolent action to oppose challenges to their
privileges.

There are many other possibilities along these lines; these examples
should give an indication of the sort of processes involved.

But why would people put up with oppression if no violence were used
against them? There actually are many reasons, including belief
systems, tradition, lack of skills to mount challenges, and
difficulties in communication and mobilisation. Even today there is a
lot of "oppression without physical violence," most clearly in
voluntary organisations. Most churches today, for example, use no
violence against members, and members are free to leave, at least in
societies where the church has no strong alliance with the
government. But many churches are hierarchical, exploitative and
oppressive, something that is clear by examining the struggles of
women for equality within many of them. If voluntary organisations
such as churches can be oppressive without violent sanctions against
dissenters, then surely oppression is possible after military and
armed police forces have been superseded by nonviolent alternatives.
Military and police forces are certainly responsible for much
oppression, but they are not the only "forces" making oppression
possible.

Possible Pathology 4: Social
Defence Evangelists Run Rampant

The introduction of social defence
is not likely to be a calm, passionless process. Like any other major
change in society, it will require articulate and committed
supporters and will encounter determined opponents. A look at the
struggles against slavery, for women's equality and for protecting
the environment gives some idea of how the process will throw up
high-profile leaders and have to confront entrenched resistance.

Some of the proponents of social defence undoubtedly will be "true
believers," so committed to the idea that no evidence will convince
them otherwise. True believers are essential to any visionary social
movement; otherwise, the whole operation might fold up at the first
serious setback.

Similarly, some proponents will see social defence as part of a wider
process of change in society, linked to changes in politics,
economics and so forth. This also may be essential to success, since
social defence has links with and implications for so many aspects of
society.

Combining these two categories gives what might be called "social
defence evangelists," namely proponents who are totally committed to
social defence as part of a reformation of society.

To call someone an evangelist is, in many circles, to apply a
negative connotation. The word can imply a single-mindedness that is
not open to contrary ideas and is insensitive to the lives and
circumstances of other people. During the centuries of imperialist
expansion from Europe, missionaries played a key role in breaking
down indigenous cultures in the name of Christianity's (and Europe's)
"civilising mission." But, as mentioned before, evangelising seems
almost an essential part of any significant challenge to and
transformation of entrenched systems of power.

If social defence is ever to be introduced, social defence
evangelists will be part of the process. But it is a simplification
of reality to talk about social defence being "introduced," because
there is unlikely to be an obvious and agreed-upon point at which
conversion of a community to social defence can be said to be
complete. Consider for example, the following possible changes:

demobilisation of all military
forces;

training of all volunteers in
nonviolent action;

conversion of all teaching in
schools to emphasise the role of nonviolent action;

revamping of communications
systems to maximise the potential for nonviolent
resistance;

decentralisation of all energy
systems, with maximum possible reliance on renewable
energy;

encouragement and subsidies
for learning languages spoken by peoples of potential aggressor
states;

redesign of transportation,
agriculture, housing, water supplies and other such systems to
maximise self-reliance;

participation in training and
simulations expected of everyone;

expectations or requirements
that all leaders of significant social organisations be trained in
nonviolent action;

transformation of economic and
political systems to make them more resistant to aggression (e.g.
moves from large-scale capitalist liberal democracy to
community-based participatory alternatives).

Each one of these changes, it
might be argued, can improve the capacity of a society to wage
nonviolent struggle. But how many of these changes are essential to
an effective social defence system? Of course, there is no clear-cut
answer to this question.

Some social defence evangelists may want to push ever onwards in the
transformation of society with the justification that this will
strengthen social defence. The motivation is hard to criticise. After
all, the elimination of war would be an enormous advance. But does
this goal justify a fundamental restructuring of society?

This question should be vexing even for those people who agree with
many of the sorts of changes outlined above. Since social defence
requires participation by a large fraction of the population, then
social changes made in the name of social defence should also be
arrived at on the basis of some participatory process.

Conclusion

There may seem little point in
speculating about these possible pathologies of social defence
systems, but thinking about future problems can provide cautionary
lessons for today's struggles. There are many different ways to
promote social defence today, and it makes sense to choose ways that
either minimise future problems or, perhaps more effectively, keep
open the options for future struggles to improve society.

One lesson from these possible pathologies is that social defence
should not be seen or treated as an overriding priority. Instead, it
should be promoted and developed in tandem with struggles against
other social problems. In the case of inspection against weapons, the
problem of surveillance must be addressed also. Likewise, various
sorts of oppression need to be opposed, whether or not they are
backed up by violence.

Another lesson is that close attention needs to be paid to the
skilled users of nonviolent action, so that they do not become a new
elite. In developing social defence, currently privileged groups may
be the first to develop and use skills in nonviolence in order to
protect their own situation. Social defence sounds good in the
abstract but it is necessary to ask, who will do the defending and
what sort of society will they be defending?

A final lesson is that social defence or nonviolent action should not
be imagined to be a magical solution to social conflict, oppression
and the like. By abolishing some sources of suffering, new arenas for
social struggle are likely to be opened up. Social defence should be
seen as part of an ongoing process, not as an end product.

Notes

1. Gene Sharp with
the assistance of Bruce Jenkins, Civilian-Based Defense: A
Post-Military Weapons System (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990).